What an
excellent film to be our first seen in Blu-Ray on our new DVD/Blu-Ray player.
I’m now convinced – Blu-Ray quality is superior. Cleaner, sharper, crisper,
brighter. No, I’ve not been paid to write this.It’s just true. Lucky for us that a few years ago a group of students
gave me a box with the DVD and Blu-Ray of this film.

The film itself
– wonderfully visual and bright and colourful (thus the advantages of Blu-Ray).
It’s funny and exciting and filled with delightful details. The cast is as
terrific as usual in Burton’s films - except
for Hathaway. I’ve liked her in all the other films I’ve seen her in but here
her affected hand-waving girlishness is just annoying.

JD with his
sweet sad vulnerable madness and a pinch of stirring revolutionary rhetoric
does one of his best roles. Helena Bonham-Carter is up to her consistently high
standards – she must have so much fun playing all these bitchy roles! – and
young Wasikowska is a refreshingly un-cute Alice.

The dash of
feminism is fun but Alice as an imperialist merchant setting off to conquer
China wasn’t quite the perfect ending for me, knowing as I do of Britain’s
coming trade wars against its colonies, but maybe I shouldn’t be bothered. She
wasn’t to know, young Alice, and it is a lovely film.

Why? Oh why not?
It was a quick exciting read on the four-hour train ride home to Stockholm from
Malmö a few years back.

Seen: August 22, 2014.

My expectations on this one are not enormous. It
will hopefully be OK Friday evening entertainment.

It starts out really bad.I hate jet skis and the young hero is way too
hunky. I hate California teen beach parties. Does the book really start like
this? John is too adult and his mentor Henri is too young. And Sarah is far too
pretty. And small town American high school films are not my cup of tea (the
exception being Roswell).As so
often gender stereotypes abound and irritate.

But enough grumbling. It’s actually quite OK.I like the concept. Alien kids – who were
destined to save their world from destruction (they failed) are hiding out on
Earth but are being killed off one by one by the Mogs, the bad aliens. Really
bad.

Sensitive youths with strange powers that must be
kept secret pop up frequently in films and TV these days. This is far from the
best – nowhere near Roswell or Harry Potter or The Hunger
Games or Merlin who all get dozens of stars from me – but I do like
this stuff. It has many flaws, this one, but it surpasses expectations. I’ve
read two more of the books.I wonder,
will they also be filmed?

Probably not worth more than half a star or so but I
am indeed entertained.

How do the British do this?All these absurdly hilarious snifflers about
really odd characters played by uniquely British (in this case including
Australian) actors?

Annie Mary is a young woman in a small Welsh town
where everyone is trying to raise money to send the ailing Bethan to
Disneyland, though she doesn’t really want to go.

Poor Annie Mary.Her Pavarotti-singing, sex-starved father is much admired in the village
of Ogw but he’s cruel to her, demeaning her at every turn.But she really is very Annie Mary, an
awkward, stumbling, peculiar loser.Everything she does turns into a disaster.

I love this film.I’m really glad I don’t live in this village but I love the unkind
Jonathan Pryce - who expresses more without saying a word than most actors do
with reams of good lines - and Rachel Griffiths, and their two pathetic
characters.

Peter Stormare –
The
Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassas, The Brothers Grimm, Dancer in the Dark, The Big
Lebowski, Fargo

Mary Alice – The Matrix Trilogy, Sunshine State, Malcolm
X

Alice Drummond - Ghostbusters

Dexter Gordon – Around
Midnight

Anne Meara – Reality
Bites, ALF,and many other TV shows

Why? There is Parkinson’s
disease in my family.

Seen: Once before. Now August 15, 2014, in memory of
Robin Williams

He’s a doctor who has never treated actual patients.
He’s done research with earthworms, mostly. He gets a job in a clinic for the
chronically ill.MS. Tourette’s. Parkinson’s.
In 1969.He can’t even communicate with them.

But he’s the profoundly kind Robin Williams. He has
crazy ideas. The other doctors think he’s as crazy as the patients (who aren’t
crazy either).He performs miracles only
to see them quickly fall apart.

I’m not going to tell you the story.If you haven’t seen this film, see it.